There is still so much we need to know about how breast cancer cells escape from the original breast tumour, enter the blood stream and manage to seed new tumours in places such as the bone, lungs and brain.

Cancer cells are extremely resilient and able to survive in harsh conditions, sometimes lingering in the body even after treatment. Finding ways to tackle this resilience will help scientists develop more effective ways to treat breast cancer.

The best way to stop people dying from breast cancer is to stop it occurring in the first place. To do this, we need to be able to identify those most at risk of breast cancer and work out what we can do to prevent them from developing it.

Radiotherapy and chemotherapy currently used to treat breast cancer can have harmful side effects. Researchers are developing new therapies that aim to stimulate the body’s immune system to attack and kill breast cancer cells, called ‘immunotherapies’

People with breast cancer can become resistant to current therapies, and some types of breast cancer have fewer treatments options, so we need to continue to find new drugs for breast cancer, to improve the chances of survival and quality of life for thousands of patients.